Major Language Groups
India is a country of many languages. According to Pryerson, editor and compiler of The Linguistic Survey of India, about 180 languages and about 550 dialects are spoken by Indians. Important groups of these languages are: Austro-Asiatic, Tibeto-Burman, Dravidian and Indo-Aryan. The Austro-Asiatic languages in India appear to be the oldest and are generally known as the Munda dialect or language. People who speak this language are spread from Australia in the east to Madagascar near the east coast of Africa in the west. However, there are a large number of speakers of this language in Southeast Asia. Anthropologists believe that the Austrian people lived in B.C. Around 40,000 came to Australia. Therefore, there is a strong possibility that they migrated from Africa to Southeast Asia and Australia via the Indian subcontinental coast 50,000 years ago. By that time language had been invented. Human genetics suggests that people from Africa came to South India about 50,000 years ago, from where they traveled to Indonesia and later Australia via the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
Austro-Asian: The Austric language family is divided into two subfamilies. Austro-Asiatic, spoken in the Indian subcontinent, and Austronesian, spoken in Australia and Southeast Asia. The Austro-Asian sub-family has two branches – Munda and Mon-Khmer. Mon-Khmer represents the Khasi language, spoken by the Khasi and Jaitiya Hills in Meghalaya in north-east India, and also in the Nicobar Islands. However, Munda language is spoken in a very large area. The Santhals, the largest tribal group of Jharkhand, Bihar, West Bengal and Orissa in the subcontinent, speak this language. The language forms of Munda, Santhal and Hoj etc. were also called Mundari language. Which is prevalent in West Bengal, Jharkhand and Central India. Munda Satha are widespread in the Himalayas.
Tibeto-burman: The second group of languages is Tibeto-Burman, a branch of the Sino-Tibetan family. If we think about China and other countries, the number of speakers of this language family is more than that of the Austric family and even the Indo-Aryan family. There are more than 300 languages in this family which are spoken in China, Tibet and Myanmar (Burma). In the Indian subcontinent, Tibeto-Burman languages extend from north-eastern Assam to north-eastern Punjab in the Himalayas. It is used in the north-eastern states of India and a large number of people here speak various forms of the Tibeto-Burman language. Different tribes use 116 dialects of this language. The north-eastern states where it is spoken include the states of Tripura, Assam, Meghalaya, Arunachal, Nagaland, Mizoram and Manipur. Tibeto-Burman language is also prevalent in the Darjeeling region of West Bengal. Although both the Austric and Tibeto-Burman languages are much older than Dravidian and Indo-Aryan, due to the lack of writing, no literature was developed in these languages like Dravidian and Indo-Aryan. However, there is a literature of legends and oral traditions recorded by Christian missionaries in the nineteenth century. It is significant that Burunji, a Tibeto-Burman word, was used by the Ahoms in the medieval period in the sense of family tree. It is likely that the Maithili word panji was linked to the Tibeto-Burman word for family tree.
Dravid: The third family of languages spoken in India is Dravidian. This form of the language is spread almost throughout South India and is also prevalent in north-eastern Sri Lanka. Twenty Dravidian languages are spoken in the region. The earliest form of the Dravidian languages is found in the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent, located in Brahur, Pakistan. There are two perspectives on the migration of Pranidian-speaking people, genetic and linguistic. According to the genetic perspective, the first major migration occurred from Middle East Asia into India about 30,000 years ago. According to another view, Dravidians came from Eelam 6000 years ago. It seems that Dravidian language speaking linguistic background . Process BC Began around 30,000 B.C. Lasted till 4000. According to scholars of linguistics, the Dravidian language originated from Eelam which is south-western Iran. This language B.C. It is believed to be from the fourth millennium and Brahui is even earlier. It is still spoken in Iran, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and also in Pakistan in the states of Balochistan and Sindh. It is said that the Dravidian language reached South India via Pakistan. From where the main branches like Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam originated. But Tamil is much more Dravidian than other languages. Oraon or Kurukh, spoken in Jharkhand and central India, is also Dravidian but is spoken primarily by members of the Oraon tribe.
Indo-Aryan: Chaudha language group comes under Indo-Aryan Indo-European family. Genetic signals found by scientists in Central Asia: In India, people speaking Indo-Aryan languages are in majority and the number of people speaking Dravidian is slightly less. This shows that Indo-European speaking people migrated to India. It is said that the Eastern branch or Aryan branch of the Indo-European family is divided into three sub-branches. Which is known as Indo-Iranian, Dardic and Indo-Aryan. Iranian, also known as Indo-Iranian, is spoken in Iran and its earliest examples are found in the Zend Avesta. The Dardic language is native to eastern Afghanistan, northern Pakistan and Kashmir. However, most scholars consider the Dardic language to be a branch of the Indo-Aryan language. Indo-Aryan languages are spoken by large numbers of people in Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal. About 500 Indo-Aryan languages are spoken in northern and central India. Old Indo-Aryan also includes Vedic Sanskrit. Middle Indo-Aryan B.C. It includes Prakrit, Pali and Apabhramsha from 500 to 1000 AD. The development of Prakrit and ancient Sanskrit continued into the early medieval period and by 600 AD many Apabhramsa words were found. Modern Indo-Aryan regional languages such as Hindi, Bengali, Assamese, Oriya, Marathi, Gujarati, Punjabi, Sindhi and Kashmiri developed from Apabhramsha in the medieval period. As the original form of Nepali and Kashmiri is Dardic but later it was greatly influenced by Sanskrit and Prakrit.
Although there are four groups of languages in India, their speakers do not form a separate entity. In the past there was a continuous evolution between different linguistic groups. As a result, words from one language group appear in another language group. This process started in the Vedic period. A large number of words from Munda and Dravidian languages are found in Rigveda. However, the social and economic dominance of people speaking Indo-Aryan languages eventually led to their dominance over many tribal languages and their extinction. While the ruling classes of the Indo-Aryan languages used their own language, they could not take advantage of their resources and manpower without using the tribal dialects. This started an exchange of words.
Cognate groups and language families: Each of the four language families in the Indian subcontinent corresponds to the four ethnic groups into which the people of India are divided. These four groups are-Negrito, Australoid, Mongoloid and Caucasoid. This human racial division was made in the nineteenth century and was based on the physical characteristics of people. Thus, the Negritos are described as having short stature, narrow faces and small lips, who live in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and the Nilgiri Hills of Tamil Nadu. Negritos are also in Kerala and Sri Lanka. They are believed to speak some Austric languages. Australoids are also of short stature, although taller than the Negritos. Their body is black and they have a lot of hair. They live mainly in the central and southern regions, although they are also found in the Himalayan regions. And speak Austric or Munda language. Mongoloids are short in stature, have less body hair and a pointed nose. They live in the north-eastern regions around the Himalayas and speak Tibeto-Burman languages. Caucasoids are generally tall with a broad face and a well-proportioned chin, fair skin and a long and pointed nose. They speak both Dravidian and Indo-Aryan languages, so they are not related to the same language.
It is difficult to distinguish one racial group from others, as their physical characteristics vary due to climatic conditions. It is interesting that in some areas Brahmins and Chamars have similar physical characteristics and both speak the same language. Brahmins mention their group called Gotra, but there is no mention of such Gotras among Chamars. However, in all border areas of different cultural areas people speak two or more languages. More importantly, the mixing of different people also leads to mixing of languages. Thus, neither the basic characteristics of people remain the same nor their language remains unchanged. Therefore, any language cannot be associated only with a particular ethnic group.